Conservatives should not abandon environment debate to liberals

I am a conservative, both in terms of Southern Baptist life and politically. My initial reaction to hearing of Jonathan Merritt’s work, “A Southern Baptist Declaration on the Environment and Climate Change,” was negative.

Then I read the interview in The Christian Index, visited the website, and read the actual document. I then changed my mind.

Like most conservatives, I am understandably suspicious of anything that appears to support the radical left’s agenda, now flying under the banner of climate change. Under this guise they have promoted unwise, destructive, ungodly, and anti-American policies.

However, Jonathan Merritt’s writing is not left wing, or even left leaning. It’s a rational and biblical view of a Christian’s responsibility to be a good steward of all God blesses us with, including this good earth. It’s well written, and Merritt is obviously a talented and thoughtful young man. I’m glad he’s studying for the ministry.

Newt Gingrich, in “Real Change” laments the fact that conservatives have allowed the far left to define the environmental debate, and calls for us to engage in this area with the same rigor that we have regarding abortion and other moral issues. Christian conservatives don’t want polluted air and water, and should not allow the left to portray us as those that do.

Nations built upon biblical principles, such as the U.S., lead the world in protecting the environment. Those are conservative and Christian values, and we should not be abandoning them to the liberal left. God created the earth, declared it to be good, and then gave it to us to inhabit it (and I think it’s a great place!).

We should be doing our best to be excellent stewards of this blessing. Clean water, clean air, green grass, trees, flowers, and animals are all part of this marvelous planet, created by God, and doing our best to keep it that way is hardly a liberal philosophy.

In fact, I would argue that in this area, like so many others, only the church of Jesus Christ has the authority, the resources, the wisdom, and the best motivation for resolving environmental problems. We should not abandon this fight to the un-churched.

Thanks for covering this story, and kudos to Mr. Merritt for addressing this important, albeit controversial, issue. Serious Baptists and Christians need to read Merritt’s statements, and decide its merits for themselves.

Knee jerk reactions, such as my initial one, are often wrong.

Eddie Mayfield, president, EMA Inc., Norcross

Georgia farmer: ‘Help the earth any way we can’

God made the earth so his people could survive by tilling the soil to grow food and raise animals to eat, so anything we can do to help in climate change or global warming we need to do.

God gave you sense to go get help if you get sick. Well, as a Southern Baptist farmer I believe that we need to help the earth in any way we can because He wouldn’t have made the earth for man to destroy.

That will be His job to do when he gets ready! See Matt. 24:36.

Hall McCallum, Wray

Merritt environment coverage ‘beyond comprehension’

Your recent publicity and promotion of Jonathan Merritt is beyond comprehension.

Have you never heard any sermons about “stewardship”? I have and they include using not only our time wisely but nature, natural resources, and the time and talents that we devote to God and Jesus and to make this country and world a better place for all.

Merritt is getting on the bandwagon of humans being the cause of catastrophic changes in the environment. God is in charge of that.

The weather is cyclical; any person of even limited intelligence once given the facts will agree that man can not destroy the environment. We can do some local and temporary inconvenience but not change the world climate.

Giving Merritt front-page coverage harms Christianity, especially Baptists, and puts us in bed with Communism and politicians like Al Gore. Merritt should change denominations because he is not a Southern Baptist.

Cancel my subscription to The Christian Index, effective now, and refund my unused subscription.

William Ralph Graham, St. Simons Island

Merritt is ‘certainly no conservative’

I do not understand the flattering front-page coverage on Jonathan Merritt. First, without any real research or science, he and a few others put out a pro-global warming Declaration under the guise of being an official statement of the Southern Baptist Convention.

I read the Declaration in full, and looked at other areas of the website. I’ve emailed them (with no response) asking why they did not fully research the available material, which clearly shows there is no science behind anthropogenic global warming.

Now, we read in the Friday, April 18 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution (http://www.ajc.com/printedition/content/printedition/2008/04/18/merritted0418.html) a guest opinion column with his advocacy for Obama and trying to make the ridiculous case that young conservative Christians are going for Obama.

Mr. Merritt is certainly no conservative. I wonder if he would have been presented with so many column inches and so favorably if he were not the son of a former SBC president.

As Christians, we have a particular duty to the truth and the facts. The Declaration his group put out is untruthful and factually in error.

The proper response is twofold: 1) the SBC should make it clear that this Declaration is without basis in science and not supported by the SBC, and 2) find out how an individual gets control of this organization with the Southern Baptist name, and can put this mythology out because he got all excited about what some uninformed professor said, and put better controls on what carries the Southern Baptist name.

When society goes off chasing the mythology du jour, the SBC as part of the body of Christ has a duty to tell the truth, not see how we can compromise with the world.

Indeed we Christians are responsible to God to have good stewardship of the environment. But our stewardship is limited to local, not global, actions. Mankind is far too puny to affect global climate change, and to believe otherwise is to ignore science and indulge our own arrogance.

It is my earnest prayer that Mr. Merritt would choose to seek the truth, a task not too awfully difficult since he knows the One who is Truth Himself. Such a spiritual and intellectual journey would land in a humble retraction of this nonsense on both global warming and Obama.

I hope The Christian Index is willing to stand for truth in this case. Editor Gerald Harris’ editorial contained many good facts that contradict the Declaration of Mr. Merritt’s aberrant group, and you were gracious to him at the same time.

Jeff Jones, Waleska

Editor’s Note: Jonathan Merritt, when contacted by The Index regarding his AJC column, stated that he did not endorse Obama but was reporting what others had said about the candidate. He further told The Index: “I would never vote for a pro-choice candidate. I was simply adding some cultural commentary based on a poll by Relevant Magazine among conservative young Christians. It asked ‘Who would Jesus vote for?’ The number one answer was Obama. I even added ‘As things are now, I’m not so sure Jesus would vote for anyone.’ For the record, I am a registered Republican.” On another note about the general discussion of his document, he said “I am surprised by how quickly a pro-life, pro-marriage, small government conservative can be cast as a liberal.”